Power Lawyers: THR Unveils America's Top 100 Entertainment Attorneys

Why he matters: Grode represented Koch Media in the acquisition of the assets of THQ, which has produced video games around such properties as Jeopardy!, Wheel of Fortune and SpongeBob SquarePants. He also represented DFI in a financing venture with Participant Media and helped found Media Content Capital, then arranged for the firm to invest $25 million in QED, a foreign sales company. Grode helped raise $500 million for Miramax based on a more precise way of deter- mining the value of each film so that lenders were confident the 700-film library was worth twice the loan amount.

Big deal: When he wasn’t coaching his kids’ sports teams, Grode helped Colony Capital and a consortium of investors pay $420 million to acquire then-bankrupt Lodgenet Interactive, which provides VOD to hotels. “You had old lenders, new lenders, old equity and new equity, you had the company, and you had us,” he recalls. “Alliances were formed and broken minute by minute in that deal.”